


Two Halves

by koushi



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Altered Mental States, Dark, Death, F/M, Infidelity, Reincarnation, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-30
Updated: 2011-03-30
Packaged: 2017-10-17 09:32:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koushi/pseuds/koushi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A woman who finds her raison d'être. Mal POV.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Halves

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Inception or any of its characters.

Death isn’t so bad really. At least not once you get over the nauseating experience of being cleaved into two, the spirit leaving the body. That part was made easy for me: when I hit the pavement, there was a—noiseless, mind you— _pop_ , and I skidded across the asphalt some yards away from my body, my old vessel, eyeing it with slight disdain as if grimacing at dated and thoroughly embarrassing yearbook photos. But turning, I dusted myself off and walk away. I had places to go after all.

When you tell me that you’re leaving for Tokyo for the last time, I implore you to take me with you. But you only chuckle, caressing me as you always do. Your hand rests at the small of my back, a dimple seemingly made so that you might hold me, heat from your fingertips radiating through the thin material of my silk negligee. Your cheek is but centimeters from mine, the scent of your expensive aftershave fresh on your skin.

“Appearances, my lovely Mal,” you say. “We must keep up with appearances. We’ve already cut it too close.”

If only you knew how little that mattered to me then. I’d lived fifty years, a full life, and had been recast into the body of a young woman, as if given a second chance. And with this life, I would make no mistakes.

“It’s you I want to be with,” I say, abrasively blunt. But fifty years gone by in an instant makes you appreciate the weight of time as it crushes your body, hunching your shoulders and buckling your knees. I just wanted to stay standing next to you.

“Your husband… he is not a forgiving man,” you say with an expression somewhere on the spectrum between perplexed and amused. You trail kisses softly down my jawline and rise up for the final hurrah, lips to lips.

“He’ll understand,” I smile through a wince as we separate. Kissing involves whiplash: due to the inconvenience some might call “the need to breathe,” each time is as painful as the last because each time has an end. As for Dom, I’ve had a life with him, for him. And now I want a life of my own.

You shake your head as if confronted with the most infantile of puns. “Mal, our souls, they were forged from the same mold. We complete each other, this is true…” You raise your other hand to stroke my face tenderly, but it’s as dualistic as our kisses: I shiver as I feel the cold metal of your wedding band brush against me. “…but we just weren’t meant to be together in this life.” And suddenly, I feel just as cold.

Another miss? Another life to pass me by? Another life of sacrifice and _appearances_?

Perhaps you expect me to become angry, to throw things, even to break down and sob. And that’s what I ought to do because I opened every door to you, and you’ve accepted every invitation except the last, the only one that counts. But instead I intensify eye contact—I’m fixated, continuing to smile. I’ve lived a life in waiting. For a train or for you, it doesn’t matter. Because I tire of it.

I’m going to take matters into my own hands.

Unflinchingly, I reply, “I’ll see you then.”

My husband, Dom, he doesn’t understand why I’m acting strangely. He might even suspect—however laughably—that it’s something that he’s done. Pedantic and overenthusiastic about his competence, he might come off badly to most. Yet I’ve long accepted his flaws and once, in a past life, even loved them. But even the most competent person in the world couldn’t change the fact that when you find that one soul in the universe who makes you feel like you’re going home again, makes you remember what you once were at the dawn of creation, there is no letting go.

I let him believe there’s something wrong with me when, really, things have never been more right.

It’s our anniversary: sixty-two, no, _twelve_ years together, _poof_ , in the blink of an eye. And I choose this night to let go. I’ve made my preparations, ready to start the next chapter in my existence rather than reliving a tale I’ve outgrown, like a worn sweater whose sleeves are an inch too short. The view from the window is picturesque as I dangle my feet from the edge. One shoe precedes me, toppling into oblivion. I could not, in my wildest fantasies, have imagined a more beautiful death.

The stars are barely visible above the halo of city lights when I stare upwards for the last time in this body, in this life on replay. I bear no attachment; it’s merely a vehicle for my soul, an exoskeleton to be shed with as little ado as possible. When I leave, it isn’t as gut-wrenching as it is for most people, no. In fact, I welcome the sensation of nothing left to lose.

And now?

Now I wander the realm of existence and nonexistence, weaving seamlessly from dream to reality, and always, _always_ , with a will of my own. Time is malleable like this, as an untethered spirit; there is no such thing as waiting when the threads of space are tangled into one giant, inextricable knot.

At this moment, I feel the tug, as I’m given a new home for my soul, as I’m made whole again. At this moment, you’re waiting for me on the other side, in a life we’ve chosen for ourselves from start to finish. At this moment, I am beaming incandescent, smiling as if I had lips.

At this moment, gasping, choking, _breathing_ , I inhale for the first time.


End file.
